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Blunders and Binders

By Charles M. Blow October 17, 2012 9:05 pmOctober 17, 2012 9:05 pm

Photo

Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Tuesday’s debate went the way folks thought the first one would: with President Obama outmaneuvering Mitt Romney, defending his own record forcefully and not letting Romney slip away from his. Obama called Romney out on things that were “not true” — a phrase he used in some form at least six times. Romney, for his part, committed unforced errors, as is his wont.

The contest was a clear victory for Obama. Not a devastating loss for Romney, but a clear win for the president. Now the world makes sense again. Crestfallen Democrats took a breath. Giddy Republicans stopped walking on air.

Can someone get this man a binder full of facts?

The president came into the debate with lowered expectations, but he exceeded them. According to the Pew Research Center, people expected Obama to outperform Romney in the first debate by a margin of 51 percent to 29 percent. But after Obama performed like he was catatonic and Romney performed like he was over-caffeinated, things changed. The performance expectation gap going into the second debate was negligible, with just 41 percent thinking Obama would do better and 37 percent thinking Romney would win the day.

The president performed brilliantly, with force, verve and agility. As we used to say down south: he showed up and showed out. The base loved it.

Even the snap polls, which I take with a grain of salt because they can tilt Republican in their samples, gave the edge to Obama.

This time, it was Romney who did himself damage.

He completely flubbed his line of attack on Benghazi.

Then there was Romney’s odd “binders full of women” comment about seeking suggestions from women’s groups to “find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet” when he was governor of Massachusetts.

He was laboring to avoid answering the actual question about pay equity for women.

What actually happened was that in 2002 — prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration — a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor. They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.

Can someone get this man a binder full of facts?

Romney has spent the last few weeks shedding his “severely conservative” plumage like the feathers from a molting chicken. But on Tuesday night the president reminded voters of who his challenger was a few months — and a few years — ago. The picture that emerged was Whiplash Willard, a man you can never truly love and about whom you can always find something to loathe.

The master stroke came at the end. Answering the final question, Romney offered a defense against an assault that had not yet been levied, a defense he had rehearsed for the attack he anticipated over his negative comments about the 47 percent. But Obama didn’t level this attack until his very last comment, when Romney could not respond. Crafty.

Even stylistically, Romney hit the wrong notes.

There is a fine line between feistiness and testiness. Romney has never negotiated that line well in debates and last night he fell over it again. At one point he scolded the president — the president of the United States! — “you’ll get your chance in a moment. I’m still speaking.”

Regardless of how it may have felt in the hall and how his base may have received his abrasive behavior, to most others watching it was déclassé and indecorous. When you’re challenging a sitting president for his job, you have to respect the office, even if you don’t respect the man.

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Weekly pieces by the Op-Ed columnists Charles Blow and Ross Douthat, as well as regular posts from contributing writers like Thomas B. Edsall and Timothy Egan. This is also the place for opinionated political thinkers from all over the United States to make their arguments about everything connected to the 2012 election. Yes, everything: the candidates, the states, the caucuses, the issues, the rules, the controversies, the primaries, the ads, the electorate, the present, the past and even the future.